User talk:Victorgrigas

Molo. I added the notice to his userpage, and added a section to the list of deceased users on Meta (m:Deceased_editors#Ntsika_.27prince_Lain.27_Kellem). PiRSquared17 (talk) 04:14, 16 Eyo Kwindla 2014 (UTC)

Enkosi! Thank you!Victorgrigas (talk) 04:17, 16 Eyo Kwindla 2014 (UTC)

The stub articles

Hi Victor,
I lived in Illinois myself when I was a little boy in the 1960s.

What you are trying to do is commendable but there's a problem.
The stubs you are creating are the sort of thing that regularly gets blown away by senior editors.
Why? Because there's no content. You're making a scrapbook of photos.
You're not conveying an impression of what an article could or should look like.
If you are expecting an army of other students to show up and start adding content to your stubs ... that will never happen.

A better strategy is to create some more valuable content.
Take Joe Slovo Park. Slovo's a famous guy; your article does not link to anything on him.
How do you say "Slovo Park" in Xhosa?
What are some activities that people do in the park, and how do you say that in Xhosa?

You only need a paragraph or two, and then that will be a decent model for other people to follow.

How do you feel about my comments?
In Canada, Varlaam (talk) 02:10, 24 Eyo Kwindla 2014 (UTC)

Apparently Victor does not speak Xhosa. Uthetha isiNgesi qha? (He only speaks English?) PiRSquared17 (talk) 02:57, 24 Eyo Kwindla 2014 (UTC)

Hi PiRSquared, that is correct, I don't speak any Xhosa.

Hi Varlaam, that sounds like a reasonable rule to me - however let me explain what happened:
1.) I learned of the untimely death of user:Ntsika_Lain.
2.) somehow I felt I wanted to do SOMETHING about it - you know how deaths make you feel like you need to DO something?
3.) I started a bunch of articles in the way you describe, using a Xhosa-English dictionary for names of things and adding only photos, a stub tag and maybe linking to other languages with the same subject.
4.) I forgot about it and a few days later user:Nomden added a few sentence descriptions and a few paragraphs under articles I had (sort of, not really) started. Examples: Umlomo, IBlomfanteni, Iipijama I can't read any of Nomden's content, but the user did start E-UNISA, so my guess is that he or she has some academic background or something and that the edits seem to be a bit messy but constructive.
My thoughts about this are:

1.) This Wiki is on life support. It was going to be closed, and my take is with things that are close to failure you have to try new things - and my new thing (born out of grief) seems to have had some serendipitous good luck! Maybe Nomden did a google search for something and saw that he/she could edit the page because it had been tagged as a stub? I have no idea, but to me it seems like something worth exploring. I'm sure lots of literate (by that I mean potential Wikipedian) Xhosa-speakers Google things in their language only to find junk and then likely default to another more prominent language like English. But what if this is a key to fixing that? What if there were 1000 articles created the way I did that all said that they were stubs that you can add to? Then when Xhosa speakers Google something, it's quite possible that those pages would come up. Maybe it's a way to get content for other smaller languages as well?

2.) I'd love to get things translated. Today I was looking for Xhosa speakers (if any) in Chicago and found a translator in Cape Town - for hire of course. If need be I'll find a translator to help me make articles, but I'd prefer to keep trying this, especially since it seems to have had some good luck on a first try.

3.) I totally agree that a practically content-free Xhosa Wikipedia article is almost entirely useless and the article should have a seed of a literate explanation of a topic contained within it (at least), and usually does get blown away by senior editors (and should) except that 1 - this Wikipedia has almost no content already, and 2 - this procedure I've been experimenting with for a week might be a way to attract such content.

Example: When I published this blog post I made the extra effort to get it translated into Xhosa, largely out of respect to the students in the video. I didn't think too many Xhosa-speakers might be reading but someone did comment! They wrote this:

"ndiziva ndichulumancile yile mbono noxa ndingekayibambi ncam eyona njongo yayo. kodwa into endiyaziyo ndandizibuza ukuba kutheni isiXhosa singekho nje kuwikipedia.ndade ndanembono yokuqala iphulo elikwanje lokuba abafundi nabaphandi bakwazi ukufumana isiXhosa. ndiva lo mfundi efuna ukufumana ulwazi ngesaphulelo. ndifuna ukuqonda ke ngoku ukuba iguqulo lwimi lona lungena ndawoni, kule ndawo ndiyitshoyo yokufumana ulwazi kwiwikipedia ngeelwimi zesintu? ukba kunjalo ndiyazivolotiya ukutolika isiXhosa ukuba ixesha alixinenanga kuba ndikwasebenza lo msebenzi woguqulo emini. Enkosi ozingcayo ngesiXhosa."
Which translated to:

“I feel excited about this and think it’s a good idea though I haven’t yet understood its full meaning. I have always wondered why there were no Xhosa pages on Wikipedia until I thought of starting a petition like this one where we would campaign for a Xhosa Wikipedia. Now I’m seeing these students who are petitioning for a free access to Wikipedia but I just want to know how translating and editing on Wikipedia works concerning the Xhosa Wikipedia (and/or other African languages)? I volunteer myself and would really like to edit the Xhosa Wikipedia and also help translate other articles into Xhosa because I always have free time and by the way translating is the job I’m doing so I would enjoy it. Thanks. From a Proud Xhosa”

I will say I asked for help with translation for that and it took a few days. And while I am writing this, I'm reaching out the the person (I presume) on Twitter since she seems interested in creating articles.

I think that there are many Xhosa-speakers online but maybe Xhosa-speakers just need to see a little bit written first, and I think they need to see that 'stub' tag to be educated about how to add to Wikipedia (like the question above), then it may attract a small community? I don't expect a whole classroom of edits all at once. Maybe a trickle.

I like to think of it like when Wikipedia was a new project, when the rules weren't established, when there weren't senior editors, because on this Wikipedia there are a few people involved, but so few that it was proposed to be closed! Twice! So I do think that non-standard or unusual practices might yield good results. In the past weeks, they seem to have.

Per other questions:

Take Joe Slovo Park. Slovo's a famous guy; your article does not link to anything on him.
How do you say "Slovo Park" in Xhosa?

When I was there, everyone said "Joe Slovo Park" just like Germans say "Restaurant" like you say it in France, but I could be wrong, there might be a Xhosa way to say it, and I have no idea if the custom is to defer to that name or make a new name.

What are some activities that people do in the park, and how do you say that in Xhosa?

I'll find stuff to populate this page as soon as I can! It has a bit in English right now, I could try to get that translated.

How do you feel about my comments?

I appreciate them very much, I think you are being very constructive! I remember the days when English Wikipedia was all red links and one-sentence explanations, but this (foreign language Wikpedia) is a new area for me - so I want to be as constructive as I can be. I welcome your thoughts on this. :)

Victorgrigas (talk) 06:28, 24 Eyo Kwindla 2014 (UTC)

Hi, did you see Special:Diff/23240? PiRSquared17 (talk) 14:16, 25 Eyo Kwindla 2014 (UTC)

Yes, Ewe, I have :))))) I just bought a paper Xhosa-English Dictionary on Amazon.com so that I could reply and start to write articles. I'm going to write, and get corrected. I'll buy you a dictionary too if you like :) Vgrigas (talk) 02:22, 27 Eyo Kwindla 2014 (UTC)

XH WP - recent activity

Greetings, User:Victorgrigas, and welcome upon your return to the isiXhosa Wikipedia. Here are some updates regarding current activity here:

• I personally don't know the isiXhosa language, but through regular contributing to the isiZulu WP which I undertook last July (2017), it seemed plausible to devote some effort here too. I use Google Translate judiciously, i.e. not much. Initially (early April) I contacted the one active editor, User:Nomden, but she hasn't appeared much since then.
• Much of my effort in the indigenous African WPs is to reconcile duplications and discrepancies, many in the form of resolving red links and categorization. A lot can be done by a non-native speaker who knows wiki markup language, working through the Special pages (Amaphepha Abalulekileyo) and Wikidata.
• In the absence of an Administrator or native-speaker editors, I patrol the Recent changes (Utshitsho olusandokwenziwa) for vandalism and edits needing revision to conform to the XH WP standards I've learned. To perform changes I alert the sysops on the m:Small Wiki Monitoring Team.
• I read your discussion above with User:Varlaam and would like to add the following observations based on my and others' activity here:
  • If your main interest is creating stub articles, I recommend you work with relevant biographies. These have the advantage of reliable page name spellings per Wikidata (which is absolutely not the case for geographic locales whose spelling and page-name grammar is unclear in XH). See en:Category:South African people and by occupation. Personally I'm interested in writers and performing artists, and of course political figures, for South Africa in particular and all Africa.
  • One helpful project would be to make special-purpose XH stub templates (biography, geography...) before creating too many more stub-length pages. I presently lack technical knowledge of Templates. If this is your area of interest or expertise, we can discuss how to prioritize and streamline their application. (I'm a very fast typist and a professional proofreader, so I cheerfully do a lot of the repetitive work, e.g. populating categories with pages.)
  • As you have a lot of experience in the Commons, you can certainly add files to pages here lacking illustrations. When I do this, I usually provide a caption using Google Translate and state clearly in the Edit summary: Translation needs verification!
  • I'm due to increase my communications with Wikimedia ZA, who are busy preparing to host the upcoming Wikimania 2018. There doesn't seem to be much urgency about the indigenous African language WPs, but I'm ready to engage when that becomes a real possibility.

I'd appreciate your response to the above. Feel free to ask me any questions. -- Cheers, Deborahjay (talk) 21:16, 30 May 2018 (UTC)